The entropic approach to understanding the cosmological constant

by Jim Cline (Department of Physics, McGill University)

Wednesday 8 Aug 2007, 14:00 → 15:30 Europe/Zurich

TH AMPHITHEATRE (CERN)

It has recently been proposed to replace the anthropic principle with a more objective criterion: the likelihood of creating observers is proportional to the amount of entropy production within a causally connected region of the universe. This "entropic principle" does a better job of predicting the value of the cosmological constant than does its anthropic predecessor, and it is falsifiable, through its power to predict other properties of the universe to which the existence of observers is sensitive. For example, dark matter should be unstable on cosmological time scales.